Clean, Sober And Funny

Local Comedian Beats Alcohol To Enjoy Living

December 02, 1993|By MONETTE AUSTIN Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — Cigarette smoke hangs in the air and people tip back bottles of beer while waiting to be entertained. A microphone stand and guitar sit on the stage at the club. It could be the beginning of a quiet night of acoustic music.

Within a few moments, though, musical comedian R. Bruce Richardson steps into the spotlight and changes that notion completely.

With a mischievous grin and a swig of his nonalcoholic beer, Richardson launches into an hour and a half of musical parodies and lampoons of everyday things. The Hampton native chuckles and strums his way through a song spoofing Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" that Richardson calls "D.O.A. in Margaritaville." It's a ditty related to the recent tourist attacks in Florida. As he lights his seventh Carlton 100 in less than two hours, he talks about quitting the smoking habit.

"I was going to get the patch, but I want to wait for the body stocking," he says.

Then he makes good-natured fun of his Scandinavian wife, the "Viking Weeble." Sitting at the back of the room with a camcorder, Lynn Richardson just smiles.

Richardson asks if anyone remembers Santana and receives one, slow "Yeah" from the sparse audience. Even that becomes material for the comedian.

"It's that fever pitch of enthusiasm I'd like you to maintain," he jokes.

He's used to tough crowds. Richardson, 40, began performing nearly 25 years ago in bars where, he says, people weren't expecting to laugh.

"I learned entertaining in places where there were more tattoos than teeth, where they weren't expecting anything. Some of them didn't even want to be there," he says.

It was this proving ground that gave Richardson the confidence to tackle any room.

"I never do long pieces. You have to be funny, funny, funny," he says, as he makes chopping motions with his hands. "People are not here to hear you sing. They're here to laugh."

His own life wasn't much to smile about a decade ago. "I drank through the '80s," he says. "I sobered up in a middle-aged body."

His lean frame and long, gray-streaked brown hair are testament to the new R. Bruce Richardson. He talks, in one of his most serious tones of the evening, about his life as a drunk.

"I made an album just before I stopped drinking. As the album came out, I went down hard," he says.

When asked how he could produce an album, perform and be drunk at the same time, Richardson just shakes his head.

"I had my life set up so I could drink," he says, adding that he consumed large amounts of vodka every morning so he could get through until noon.

A stint at a Virginia rehabilitation center gave Richardson time to dry out and heal. He came out and avoided comedy for a little while, but then he wanted to see what it would be like performing sober. It felt good.

"To me there's a magic to it," he says. "For me, it's like leaning into the wind, the audience is holding you up."

Richardson demonstrates this as he turns crowd response from a sexual joke he begins with Devo's tune, "Whip It," into a 10-minute spiel about the sexual benefits of Shower Massage units. The room loves it.

Musical comedians are rare. Richardson mentions Weird Al Yankovich and Ray Stevens as the only successful, national examples. He says comedy or music fare better on their own.

"Musical comedy is usually neither. Either somebody is a comedian and could play a few notes so they just stuck a guitar in there or they were a good musician who isn't funny," he says.

The hardest part for me is that my show will stand on its own, but it needs somewhere to stand," he says.

For now, it's on Sundays at Cozzy's in Newport News. Friend and fellow musical comedian The Madhatter held this schedule slot throughout the summer. Richardson is reminded that his friend often borrows his material. As the audience loudly sang along with the chorus of his tune, "Bleach Blondes," he stopped.

"You know this?"

"Yeah!"

"Because...

"The Madhatter does it."

"I bet you sing it better for him," teases Richardson. "Did he tell you it was my song?"

"No," said a woman. "But he did say a friend wrote it."

"Yeah, I can take that to the bank," said Richardson.

He realizes his vocation may not bring him fame and fortune. If he could just get his two stepsons' college tuition taken care of, he'd be happy. Honestly, he says, happiness is something he's a lot closer to these days without the alcohol and even without great success.

"I'm happy with the process of living," he says. "The saddest thing in life is to be finished."